Tech Report: 1TB Barracudas failing in droves, users claim

oldabelincoln · Post by **oldabelincoln** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 7:18 pm

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/16232

It's not just the 1TB drives, it appears to apply to all models of 7200.11 drives.

Apparently the Seagate forum modertors have been deleting posts and making life uncomfortable for people who post about the problem. The discussion has accordingly moved from the Seagate forum to http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128092. It appears that Seagate is keeping mum at present.

The drive works ok till one day it isn't there on boot. It presents a busy to the BIOS, or a zero capacity, depending on the state of things.

I've got 4 of these puppies, all bought recently. None have failed, but then I have only 2 in actual use at present.

larsolsen · Post by **larsolsen** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 4:14 am

I have the 500gb model and i just replaced it with my old drive as it is failling. 9 months old and over 100 reallocated sectors, so i don't trust it with my data anymore. it's also one of the noisiest drives i have ever owned.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 8:00 am

no wonder they stopped issuing 5-year guarantees, can't even make them last 5 months!

oldabelincoln · Post by **oldabelincoln** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 11:30 am

larsolsen wrote:I have the 500gb model and i just replaced it with my old drive as it is failling. 9 months old and over 100 reallocated sectors, so i don't trust it with my data anymore. it's also one of the noisiest drives i have ever owned.

I have no doubt that there are similar issues out there, but, in fairness, that's not part of the headline problem, which so far, has not been reported to have a buildup period that leads to a failure. The common report is "runs fine, then dies".

larsolsen · Post by **larsolsen** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 12:43 pm

oldabelincoln wrote:
larsolsen wrote:I have the 500gb model and i just replaced it with my old drive as it is failling. 9 months old and over 100 reallocated sectors, so i don't trust it with my data anymore. it's also one of the noisiest drives i have ever owned.
I have no doubt that there are similar issues out there, but, in fairness, that's not part of the headline problem, which so far, has not been reported to have a buildup period that leads to a failure. The common report is "runs fine, then dies".

True, and i'm hoping mine is a one off.

oldabelincoln · Post by **oldabelincoln** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 4:18 pm

Tech Report: "Seagate offers fix, free data recovery for bricked Barracudas"

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/16246

Best discussion thread is http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?sho ... 092&st=680

As of this post, Seagate customer service is saying that they don't have the firmware available yet, maybe next week. No one has posted a response from Seagate regarding data recovery on dead drives.

Here is a dialog with Seagate posted on MSFN (above thread, #692), 16 January 2009 at 2:18 US Pacific time:

All agents are currently busy. Please stand by.
Hello. How may I help you?
aliveathome: I just read this page, http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/s ... cId=207931 IÂ´m looking for an firmware update to my still working drive...
Thomas M.: Unfortunately, an update is not available yet. The engineers are looking at the issue now, and they are looking at having the firmware update available, hopefully at the later part of next week.
aliveathome: is that the same thing with all the 7200.11 barracudas?
Thomas M.: This is a 7200.11 drive yes
aliveathome: yes
Thomas M.: Only the models listed in the KB article.
aliveathome: ok, so I need to wait until next week for an update to my drive?
Thomas M.: Check back with us, middle to later par of next week.
aliveathome: ok, thanks and goodbye!

If we are to believe the above dialogue, it may well be that Seagate now merely intends to fix it, (a major change from refusing to acknowledge its existence), as opposed to having a fix in hand. We'll see.

Wibla · Post by **Wibla** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 5:10 pm

Looks like i made a good choice sticking with Samsung F1 for the time being... 1.5TB drives were tempting, but not when they fail like this...

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 6:16 am

I recently sent 4x 1.5TB drives for a refund because the dont work as a single drive, and you WILL loose all of your data if they are in a RAID-5 array (which they were). Massive cockup by Seagate.

Andy

greenfrank · Post by **greenfrank** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 12:40 pm

my Seagate 500gb 7200.11 is working good for now, and definitively IS quiet, very quiet. Fast and good HHD, and cheap too. But I'm concerned for the many reports I've read about death failures (see Newegg for example).
I bought it a couple of weeks ago, I hope I will have no troubles but for safe I'll back up my archives every week.

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 9:14 am

Here is an E-mail sent from Seagate to me as of the 17th of January 2009, in responce to an e-mail we sent to them detailing the problem sometime in the middle of December 2008, our e-mail included a few links to forum post with other customers having the same problems.

The following is the pathetic response from Seagate, it is Verbatim less any personal information.

---

"Thank you for sending your Seagate E-mail inquiry.

It would be instructive to have more information regarding the nature of
your problem. Please provide information regarding your computer (Brand,
processor, operating system) along with information on the drive (model,
serial number, position, i.e. master, slave). Any other details regarding
this issue would be welcome.

I look forward to hearing from you.

If you have any additional questions, please let me know."

---

This is obviously a totally generic response form Seagate, that I expect thousands of other people have also received. I suspect thay they are just stalling for time. This problem added to the minor problems I have had with the single paltter 320GB SATA desktop drives means that I am partly moving to Samsung - all 320GB drives and over will be Samsung, all 250GB drives and below will be Seagate - this obviously means that we will stop using Seagate drives in the future, when the price difference between 320GB drives and below are negligable.

Andy

ACook · Post by **ACook** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 10:08 am

andy,

what are your uses for 250 and 320GB drives these days?

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 12:01 pm

what are your uses for 250 and 320GB drives these days?

We use the 250GB drives as replacement drives when we repair someones PC and their drive has failed, and the 320GB drives for new PC's we build.

Most of the drives we replace for people are below 250GB, so they get an upgrade, we are seeing more peoples PC's with larger drives that have become faulty, such as a 250GB drive in a PC on Friday. We will of course replace drives with larger capacity models as needed. 250GB is massive overkill for most people, who tend not to use more than 60GB.

The reason why we are using 320GB drives in new builds is because they are faster than the 250GB models and only cost a few Â£Â£Â£ more, although we have supplied new PC's with every drive size up to 1TB as required.

Andy

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 7:08 am

Seagate (re)released firmware for the effected drives two days ago:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/s ... cId=207951

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/s ... cId=207957

First mfsn Forums post regarding the latest firmware release:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?sho ... t&p=829401

I'm still waiting for the early adopters to try it out for a few days before I commit to it.

Tech Report: 1TB Barracudas failing in droves, users claim

Tech Report: 1TB Barracudas failing in droves, users claim

Seagate finally provides a fix - maybe

scary